America's hospital compliance departments are staffed by stressed-out professionals who often jerk awake at night from the anxiety of monitoring all of their employers' problems and potential problems. And it turns out they're tired of it.

A survey of compliance officials conducted last October and November, and released this month, found that 58% reported waking up frequently at night and worrying about “job-related stress.” An almost equal number, 60%, reported having considered leaving their jobs in the past year because of the anxiety, according to the survey from the Health Care Compliance Association.

Roy Snell, the CEO of the HCCA in Minneapolis, said it makes sense when considered in the larger context.

Compliance departments were literally created as places to handle the problems that no one else previously wanted to take on, such as determining whether an employee or an executive has broken the law, and what to do about it, in an era when regulators are becoming more punitive than ever before, he says.

“I happen to believe that this is one of the biggest crises in the industry at the moment,” Snell says. “I defy someone to tell me differently: Healthcare is the most fined industry in the history of the Earth.”

The history of the Earth? Hmmm. Outliers would wonder whether some NFL teams, let alone the tour buses of Lil' Wayne or the Rolling Stones, could compete, at least on a per-capita basis for the title of Most Fined.

But we have yet to see the stats.